Delta SkyMiles Saves the Day! (Not an April Fools Post)

Let’s get something out of the way first: I hate Delta SkyMiles. No, wait, that’s not right. I meant I loathe SkyMiles. I detest them. I abhor them. I… (quickly checking an online thesaurus)abominate them. (Wait, is “abominate” really a word? It is? OK, good, then I abominate them.)

Anyone who is actively collecting Delta SkyMiles is either uninformed or out of their mind. Not only are SkyMiles far and away the least valuable of the major airline loyalty currencies, but Delta has changed the program without notice so many times that there is absolutely zero faith or trust left.

In fact, forget notice — Delta doesn’t even tell you about changes after they’ve made them, preferring instead to let people have fun figuring out for themselves why they suddenly can’t book the same award that was perfectly permissible yesterday.

This is one topic in which I 100% concur with the Conventional Wisdom. You are better off collecting Enron stock than you are Delta SkyMiles. At least Enron was a more honest company than Delta.

But…

Just because I despise SkyMiles (thanks, online thesaurus) doesn’t mean they don’t occasionally have value. Or to put it in cliché form, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

This week I experienced a situation where SkyMiles actually ended up being the best booking choice of all the available options, including cash. And while I am in no way suggesting that SkyMiles have earned a newfound place in my heart as a result (see the preceding 5 paragraphs), it does demonstrate that you should always check all the possibilities for every trip, even if you doubt you’ll find anything.

Sometimes you’ll be surprised.

Albany to Maui. Yes, Maui. On New Year’s.

My friend Kim e-mailed me a few days ago with a question. She wanted to get flights to Hawaii for her two nephews (who live in Albany, NY) on specific dates over the New Year’s holiday, but she had somehow neglected to buy the tickets yet. And what with it now being early December and all, the flights were unsurprisingly pricing out at over $1,600 a person.

Kim wanted to know if. instead of paying such an enormous price, she could use some of her miles instead. Of course I was incredibly helpful by immediately blurting out “Are you nuts? You want to book a mileage ticket to Hawaii during a holiday period on less than a month’s notice? Do you honestly have no clue how this works?”

No, no, I’m kidding, I didn’t say that. Well… actually I did say that, but only because I’ve been friends with Kim for a long time and that’s how she and I talk to each other.

But I honestly do like to be helpful to people who don’t know how to play the points and miles game, so I explained that while it was unlikely we could find any decent award availability to a premium destination during such a busy holiday period at this late date, I would check it out for her.

The good news was Kim had over 200,000 Amex Membership Rewards points, which meant I could theoretically book any of the 3 major U.S. carriers via alliance partners. The bad news was I could only do that if I could find low level “saver” space on either American or United.

Otherwise, we’d be stuck looking at (gulp) Delta.

Pricing the possibilities.

I started with American. I knew I could transfer MR points to British Airways Avios at a 250:200 ratio (or at 1:1 via Iberia with the current transfer bonus) and book American flights that way. But that would only work if there was saver space available, and even then I’d be subject to the Avios distance-based chart, which would cost 50,000 miles per person each way for a total of 100,000 miles. An expensive redemption.

Only standard award space, which meant I couldn’t book it with Membership Rewards. Plus it was 140,000 points roundtrip even if I could book it, which would mean a redemption of only slightly more than 1 cent per point. Blah. Strike one.

Onto United, which I knew I could book via a transfer to Aeroplan since they offer roundtrip partner awards to Hawaii for 45,000 miles per person. Much more reasonable. But it still meant I needed open saver space on United…

No luck. Only standard space available in both directions, though if I could have booked that standard space it would cost 90,000 miles roundtrip. While that’s still an expensive redemption, it’s not crazy when you remember that cash tickets were running $1,600 apiece. At that price, 90,000 miles is equal to 1.77 cents per mile, which isn’t terrible.

Now I surely did not expect to find a 45,000 mile award for a holiday Hawaii trip. But I did have the advantage of being able to transfer directly to Delta from Membership Rewards, which meant I could book a Delta award at any price. But would Delta have a price that made sense?

Well, that’s definitely not 45,000 miles. But hang on a minute. While 82,500 roundtrip certainly ain’t cheap, it’s actually a pretty decent redemption given the cash price — almost 2 cents a point. For a Delta SkyMiles ticket. Huh.

Yes, it’s 165,000 miles for 2 people, but it’s also $3,200 not coming out of Kim’s wallet. For a lot of people (including Kim) that’s a very good deal.

So should you collect Delta SkyMiles?

No! Good lord, no! Absolutely not. Because in the end, Kim could have done just as well with a 2% cash back card. She also could have used her Amex Membership Rewards points for an aspirational redemption such as Singapore Suites or Lufthansa First Class (albeit it with fuel surcharges via Aeroplan, Singapore, or ANA) and gotten even more value.

But Kim doesn’t want to go to any of those places. She wants to send her nephews to Hawaii and doesn’t want to pay $1,600 a person to do it. And if she had spent on a 2% cash back card instead, she wouldn’t have gotten the category bonuses she gets with her American Express Premier Rewards Gold card, such as 3x airfare and 2x gas, groceries, and dining. Meaning that with a normal daily spend pattern it would have taken longer to get the identical redemption (see my post “Why Are Points and Miles Better Than Cashback?“).

Finally, by collecting Membership Rewards points instead of cashback, Kim leaves open the possibility of making one of those aspirational redemptions sometime in the future. Note that this is an important distinction between SkyMiles and Membership Rewards. Even if you think you might have some use for SkyMiles in your future, collect them whenever possible in the form of Membership Rewards points. That way you can always turn them into SkyMiles as needed, but still maintain the flexibility to use them for other types of redemptions.

The Devil’s Advocate admits Delta won this round.

Don’t get me wrong. I still can’t stand SkyMiles (and I’m equally annoyed that I ran out of synonyms). But I have to admit this was an instance where Delta had the cheapest award ticket available, and it was even a relatively decent redemption. Getting 2 cents a mile for SkyMiles is practically unheard of nowadays. So I’ll give credit where it’s due.

But I won’t be putting any Delta SkyMiles in my inventory anytime soon. I’ve currently got 1,620 SkyMiles to my name and with any luck I’ll never have a single SkyMile more than that. In fact, thanks to Delta’s “no expiration” policy, I’ll probably die stuck with 1,620 SkyMiles. See, Delta gets you every time.

Devil’s Advocate is a bi-weekly series that deliberately argues a contrarian view on travel and loyalty programs. Sometimes the Devil’s Advocate truly believes in the counterargument. Other times he takes the opposing position just to see if the original argument holds water. But his main objective is to engage in friendly debate with the miles and points community to determine if today’s conventional wisdom is valid. You can suggest future topics by following him on Twitter @dvlsadvcate or sending an e-mail to dvlsadvcate@gmail.com.

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So SkyMiles are worse than Enron stock? Really? Despite the fact they had value. Enron had none. What seems to bug you is that SkyMiles are not, in fact, worthless and that seems to ruin your narrative. So your friend found value(it’s not that hard) at peak time to a peak destination on the best run US airline?
Yup, if I were you I’d never use them again.

Julian

Oh, I agree that Delta is definitely the best run US airline hands down. But they treat the members of their loyalty program with zero respect, needlessly I might add. So when you can get value from SkyMiles via a Membership Rewards transfer, that’s great, but to bank any miles directly in the SkyMiles program is extremely foolish. You’re just asking to have Lucy pull the football away from you yet again just as you go to kick it.

Gene

The problem here = COACH. Barf.

Dad

When my kids were young I sent them coach. They were happy. Including your host Scott.

I’m writing this from coach on SEA-DCA. Booze helps. Same goes for SEA-OGG.

Still, Albany to Maui with two stops sounds rough.

Julian

Fortunately the nephews are 21 years old and haven’t done a ton of traveling, so they won’t know what they’re missing by being in economy. Unless of course the guy who booked the award for them writes a blog post about it.

Brett Albertson

This is happening more and more, it seems. I have a stash of over 500,000 miles in all three of the alliances and transferrable points, but 2 of the last 3 trips I booked, Delta was the lowest mileage option. American and United are just so stingy with award space anymore that Delta was a lower number of miles for the ticket.

I think the key point here is that there was no availability at the cheapest saver level on any of the three big carriers. That meant you couldn’t book a partner award. Delta was the only option that allowed you to transfer points directly from Membership Rewards, so you didn’t need to rely on a partner award. This might say more about the flexibility Membership Rewards than it does about Delta’s generosity.

The other point of the article, that you should consider all redemption options, is a good reminder. Just because someone hates Delta doesn’t mean they should rule them out. I had a saver-level award booked to Kona on Delta over New Year’s and only recently cancelled it for unrelated reasons.

Julian

I would also add that, while the SkyMiles program is needlessly complicated with endless award “levels,” it can sometimes work to your advantage. Since AA and United only have a few levels, you’re generally either paying the low or high price. With Delta there’s a lot of possible permutations, so you’re more likely to end up somewhere in the middle, which might be better when no one has low level availability.

Josh

I’ve looked at several trips from April-August of next year for biz seats to Europe. Far and away, Delta has the most space at the “saver level”.

William

I always find good deals using SkyMiles. It isn’t the best program out there, but at least they regularly release low-level TATL J award space on their own metal. I’m convinced that the low-level J/F award doesn’t exist with AAdvantage.

True on the AA surcharges, though United generally skips them. But a fair point.

r0m8470

I thought SkyMiles are ok. Some of their moves – taking off award chart etc – are not consumer friendly, but I thought their availabilities are ok. For transpac routes, I thought their partner availability is good. There are lots of routes between major Asian airports and West coast gateways (CAN, HKG, PVG, NRT, ICN, TPE on Asia side, and SEA, LAX, SFO, YVR on NA side) with 2 or more saver level space.

Jamie Curtain

So many people give so much hate about Skymiles but don’t look at all the other pro sides.
Please show me a Skyteam partner that
a) has no YQ for c1-c2 awards and starts at 30k + 5$ for c1-c2 oneway
b) miles do not expire and therefore its great for people who only fly like once or twice a year

Most posts on blogs these days focus on earning miles when you fly a lot but what about the people who only fly when going on a vacation? They’ll never earn enough miles to redeem them til the miles expire, so even if it takes 5 years for them to earn some skymiles, at least they can redeem those points then instead of getting points posted to a program where they expire every 2 years.

I’m not saying skymiles is better than programs from other alliances, like AA,… but imo its def. the best ST program since a) and b) and on top of that, even thou its f* up when only 30% of the aircraft is full with people you still have to pay more than 30k for a c1-c2 award when you book it last minute, its still possible! Many programs (especially C2 programs) only have one category for awards (lets call it saver award) and once they are gone, no way to get an award ticket even if you were ok with burning miles.

So if you fly ST more than other alliances since its simply the cheapest there is for your route (at least that is what it is for me) than its def. much better than Flying Blue or MilleMiglia or others programs.

The only problem with this valuation is that if she wasn’t comfortable spending $1600 then she didn’t really save any money. She just used an alternative currency. Which is fine, but not what I would consider a deal, when with different dates she would’ve been looking at a much cheaper price for the same trip.

There’s the opportunity cost, too. If it would have cost 180K SkyMiles per person, then she might have said no to both paying with miles or paying with cash and just stayed home, preferring to use the miles (and the cash) for something else.

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